Date: 1992

"What I object to is that we turn ignorance into an inner landscape and pretend that this allegorical enterprise, which might be harmless or even charming, if it weren't so expensive and influential, amounts to a science."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"Only behind a waterfall of brutal and pleasurable sensations, thought Patrick, accepting the leather-clad menu without bothering to glance up, could he hide from the bloodhounds of his conscience. . There, in the cool recess of the rock, behind that heavy white veil, he would hear them yelping a...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"'I must have done,' I said, feeling the memory of another dozen books slide down Lethe's greasy banks."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"And some doctors, mapping out brain function in a style no less convincing than medieval cartography."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"Jolting out of his rank and troubled sleep he would transcribe his dream images before they slipped beneath the horizon of consciousness."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"But even if the map came to match the territory in the spookiest possible way, there would still be a few hippies, philosophers and romantics who would insist that there was a real city under all that paper, a city of experience, lost in translation. The map makers would reply that there was ind...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"A man in my position might easily head for the mountains and try to find consolation in their perseverance -- never mind the rock slides, the sinking plateaux and erupting islands -- or, at the opposite extreme, he might extort some pleasure from knowing that he will outlast the flies spinning o...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"As I breathed in I could feel my consciousness expanding along a glistening spider's web of total connectedness and as I exhaled it accordioned back into the tropical richness of my body, the streams and rivers of my blood."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)